La Iglesia

“La Iglesia” (Church)

Sunday is a good day to talk about church right? This morning at our church my husband gave a great message. As is the Bolivian custom we take up the offering at the end of the service. So as to spice things up a bit I get to give this message every week. I appreciate this honor to help people understand what God thinks about money and what we should do with it. I also give the address at the beginning right after the time of singing that the people might have the opportunity to pray and begin a relationship with Jesus. Between the weekly offering and salvation messages I deliver I have become good at making my point in under five minutes.

So this last week when my friends in Santa Cruz asked me to greet the people at their weekly bible study I figured a shortish message would suffice. I really didn’t take a mini-vacation with the intention to minister in a formal setting, but I had a feeling they would organize something. They told me that Tuesday nights at their church a couple dozen men and women get together and right now the theme is finances. My friends led the group in a some hymns and then the pastor fervently addressed the people informing them that a missionary was present. He then invited my friend to do the formal introduction. That afternoon while changing into a dress per the advice of my hosts I had put down some ideas that I thought I could talk about for around fifteen minutes. I checked the clock when I took the microphone and comfortably talked with the people and felt a great connection. As the quarter hour was coming to a close I politely thanked the pastor, my hosts, and the church as I set the microphone aside. The pastor stood and said with a bit of a laugh in his voice, “But we have a whole hour.” And he sat back down and contentedly crossed his arms; waiting. I smiled and asked the group if they wanted to hear more; they nodded emphatically. While they nodded I grinned and whispered out a prayer. Then for the remainder of my time I did a good old fashioned Holy Spirit meeting. All in all an uplifting time was had by all, myself included. Most of my content came from the months of offering messages I had shared with my own congregation. Strung all together they were as pretty as a string of pearls.

This morning for the time of offering I told our congregation this story and then I thanked them and our pastor, my husband, for providing me with the weekly preparation for an on-the-spot bible study.

And now for your viewing pleasure some pictures of last Tuesday in my friends’ church. You can click the image to see an enlarged version and read a short description.

Tagged as: friends, God thoughts, travel